


Magic Hours

by beriallen



Category: Memories of the Alhambra (TV)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Headcanon, Inspired by K-Drama | Korean Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 12:50:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17508962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beriallen/pseuds/beriallen
Summary: After everything was eventually all over, Jin-woo returned to Hee-ju and lived his new magicless reality.Set in the near future, following Jin-woo's escape from the Instance Dungeon.





	Magic Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Because I need domestic Jin-woo in my life! And also more MotA fics!

Found sorrow  
In my mind most times  
Gave it all back to the life I led  
But since times changed  
It all just rolls away  
Now I've got a woman at home  
She treats me well

—  _She Treats Me Well_ , Ben Howard

 

 

 

 

 

The first time Jin-woo came over to Hee-ju's house after everything was eventually all over—and even now, he didn’t know what got into her at the time, although he wasn’t going to complain—she ran out of the door the moment his good foot crossed the front lawn. Apparently, she had heard his car coming in when he was parking beside the house and dashed out of her bedroom into the first floor, making Grandma jump in her seat in front of the TV. She swung the front door open and Jin-woo, who was just about to walk along the pathway leading up to the terrace, was so startled that he could only stop in his tracks and gasp at her beaming face.

That was when—and again, he was both bemused and grateful at this—she ran up to him, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him so hard, she almost knocked him down. Jin-woo had to let go of his cane and grasped at her waist so he wouldn’t fall over; although, to be completely honest, maybe he did it because he just wanted to touch her. Sure enough, his palms then traveled across her back before he pulled her body closer against his.

A voice inside his head tried to remind him that they were outside, that a neighbor could be watching them disapprovingly. But when Hee-ju parted her lips, it was all he could do to slip his tongue inside her mouth. When her arms tightened around him as a response, his right hand moved to cup the back of her head as he tilted his to the side, deepening the kiss.

It was like a scene at the end of a Hollywood movie; an alternate universe that he wanted to hide in for as long as he could (and here, Jin-woo realized how ironic it was for him to want to stay outside of what was real when he had been struggling to get back to it for the past two years).

It took a _click_ and a giggle to jolt them back to reality and make them break the kiss. As Hee-ju turned around, Jin-woo looked up to find Min-ju at the threshold with her phone a few inches from her face. Her phone made another sound— _click_ —as she took one more picture.

There was a beat of silence when Jin-woo thought, “One day I’ll understand what’s going on inside that kid’s mind,” before his eyes darted to Min-ju's right. The sight of Grandma reminded Jin-woo of that scary night when she was sent to the emergency room. Hee-ju's words echoed in his ears: “She’s always had high blood pressure.” So to see her standing beside her youngest grandchild while wringing the cloth in her hands was enough to make his shoulders slump.

Hee-ju must have shared his worry. “Grandma—,” she whimpered.

Up until then, Jin-woo thought he knew what magic was, but it wasn’t until he saw the corners of Grandma’s mouth lifting upward that he fully comprehended the concept of magic.

“Omona!” Grandma said as she covered her eyes behind the cloth, chuckled and hurried back inside the house, dragging Min-ju, who cried out in protest, along.

As if on cue, Jin-woo and Hee-ju turned to look at one another at the same time, laughing out loud when they saw the same confused gape on each other's face.

“Well,” Hee-ju shrugged. She took his cane from the ground and handed it back to him, before taking his free hand in hers and leading their way toward the house.

It was only when they went inside and entered the living room that Jin-woo spotted Se-ju, with his hair sticking out in all directions and his glasses sitting uneven on his face. There was a certain sense of familiarity that was both safe and welcomed in his appearance, and Jin-woo knew Hee-ju was as glad as he was to know that, in spite of everything, Se-ju was still the same.

Se-ju was facing the TV when his sister walked in, hand in hand with Jin-woo. But then he turned away slightly from whatever it was he was watching and—Jin-woo swore he wasn’t just imagining it—scowled at him from behind the dirty lenses of his glasses.

Hee-ju must have noticed it too, because she squeezed Jin-woo's hand all of a sudden. And Jin-woo remembered that, despite what he went through for and because of Se-ju, the teenager never had a chance to really get acquainted with him, here, in this reality.

And Jin-woo just looked at Hee-ju and rolled his eyes teasingly, because that was okay; he and Se-ju had all the time in this world to get to know each other better. It was okay, because at least both of them were here.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes Jin-woo would irritate Hee-ju on purpose.

Hee-ju once told him that she almost admired how creative he could get when he really wanted to annoy her. It didn’t help that he and Min-ju would most times be in cahoots together.

Min-ju sent a text to Hee-ju while she was in the middle of a date with Jin-woo on one weekend. “Unnie, what are you wearing? Take a picture so I can see!” When Hee-ju ignored her, she texted Jin-woo instead.

They were alone in a private room of a restaurant at the time, and Jin-woo told her to stand against the wall so he could take a full-body shot of her. “Let’s just take this one picture so Min-ju won’t bother us anymore,” he convinced her.

But Min-ju _did_ bother them again. Jin-woo received another text right after Hee-ju went back to her seat, cackling as he read the content. “Min-ju said you should’ve worn the blue dress.”

Hee-ju glanced down at her outfit. “I like this one just fine,” she pouted.

Jin-woo put his phone back on the table. “I don’t know,” he said, then. “Blue is my favorite color.”

She squinted her eyes at him. “Since when?”

“Since Min-ju said the blue one was better,” he replied, chuckling to himself.

The rambling rant that followed from her was pretty much what he was hoping for. The truth was, he loved it when she went into a tirade—as long as he was on the receiving end. Hee-ju was kind and soft-spoken, and the fact that she only showed this other side of her to him, well, he must admit that it excited him somehow.

And there was this other thing— If someone had come and asked him when he first fell for her, he wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint an instance. But the memory of him being scared for his life, sitting inside his rented car in front of her hostel after he ran away from the hospital in Granada, while she stood on the other side of the driver’s door, screaming at him and calling him out for being the reckless person that he was, would always stand out.

(Also stood out was the moment he got out of a long medicine-induced sleep and found her curled up on the armchair next to his bed at the villa in Granada, and he remembered thinking that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad to wake up to the same sight every morning).

So it was with big difficulty that he tried to stifle a smile as he watched her going on at him. And if he had looked closely, he would have seen a similar suppressed grin on her face when she paused to take a breath.

When Hee-ju was finally done, Jin-woo shifted in his seat and said,

“Did you just rap again?”

She hit him with her napkin and, frankly, he had seen it coming.

 

 

 

 

Lately, Seon-ho Hyung had been berating him about wasting his money. When Jin-woo first announced that he was going to get an apartment of his own, Seon-ho Hyung was excited for him. But then Seon-ho Hyung found out that Jin-woo hadn’t been spending his nights there, anyway. “What’s the use of having a home when you keep sleeping in Hee-ju-ssi's house? You might as well move there.”

Jin-woo didn’t react to that, silently thinking that it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

On one occasion, Seon-ho Hyung whispered to him, “You guys aren’t— You know, doing _it_ in her house, right?”

Jin-woo almost spat out his coffee. “Oh my God, Hyung! Her grandmother is there all the time!”

“Then why do you sleep there almost every night!?”

Seon-ho Hyung was right; he had no reason to. Except for the fact that to be confined alone between solid walls still daunted him to this very day. After everything he had witnessed, he purchased the apartment to buy himself a sense of normalcy, but he had yet to reap the benefits. But being in Hee-ju's house—where someone was always either shouting or singing, where something was always boiling in the kitchen—kept his insides warm. It made him feel safe to sleep and know Hee-ju was near, or to wake up and make toasts for Min-ju's breakfast. Grandma was welcoming as usual; “It feels like the old times at the hostel and you’re our guest,” she told him once. The only one needed more convincing was, of course, Se-ju, with whom he shared a room.

Jin-woo usually slept on the floor of Se-ju's bedroom, which upset Grandma initially, because, she said, “The Hyung should get the bed.” But Jin-woo would rather lie on the floor if it meant Se-ju could warm up to him. He knew it was important for Hee-ju, so he made sure to give it importance as well.

So one night, after Jin-woo had just settled in his makeshift bed, he decided to just go for it. “Se-ju-yah,” Jin-woo started. When Se-ju never offered him any response, he called out softly. “Are you asleep?”

“She really likes you, you know!”

Jin-woo's eyes widened at that, surprised by Se-ju's unexpected reply. He put one hand under his head and pulled his blanket higher with the other. From where he was lying, Jin-woo couldn’t see Se-ju, but he could hear the other man as he heaved a heavy sigh, steeling himself for more things to come. Jin-woo swallowed and stayed silent, letting Se-ju take his time.

“She might love you, even,” Se-ju continued, finally.

Jin-woo blinked at the ceiling. “I really like your Noona too,” he said. “Might love her too, even.”

"That’s the thing!" Se-ju raised his voice a little and, from the sound of it, slammed the back of his hand on the mattress. He turned quiet again afterward, probably wondering if he had woken up the entire house.

When neither of them heard any movement outside the bedroom, Se-ju proceeded, “Back in Granada, she never had a life she wanted. She quit school, because of us.” He paused here, taking a deep breath. “Now that she doesn't have to work, like, a hundred jobs, I wish she would go back to school. Or play guitar again. Or whatever. But all she’s done so far is waiting. For me, for you. Not that it’s your fault,” he rambled. “And now she's just going to be whisked away.”

Jin-woo turned his head in Se-ju's direction, and waited for him to resume.

“Noona will do anything for the people she loves,” Se-ju said, then. “I don’t want her to settle down yet.”

Jin-woo let out a gentle snort. “I won’t ask your Noona to do anything she doesn’t want to do, I promise you.”

That made Se-ju scoff. “Sure,” he mumbled.

“Ya!” Jin-woo yelped. “It’s true!”

“’Kay.”

Jin-woo heard the rustle of Se-ju's sheets afterward, signalling the end of their conversation. He could argue as loud as he could, trying to ensure Se-ju that he would respect Hee-ju's wishes and whatnot, but he knew Se-ju would just ignore him.

For his part, Jin-woo went to sleep feeling like he had failed a test. He got up early the next morning after being awoken by his own uneasiness and hurried to the kitchen, where he prepared an unusually tall stack of toasts. When Hee-ju found him in the kitchen an hour later, her eyes skimmed over the toasts before they landed on him. Her knitted forehead and the slight incline of her head uttered the question she didn’t even need to ask, “What’s going on?” He had just opened his mouth to tell Hee-ju when Se-ju appeared all of a sudden. Jin-woo watched him as he sneaked around his sister and helped himself to a slice of toast before sitting at the dining table.

“Okay, then,” Se-ju muttered lazily before he bit into the toast. Se-ju probably meant it to no one in particular, but Jin-woo's hunch suggested otherwise. And Jin-woo smiled, because perhaps he wasn’t doing so bad after all.

 

 

 

 

Jin-woo told Hee-ju about what happened with Se-ju when they went to hang out at his apartment. As it was almost always empty, the apartment had become their official hideout when they really wanted to be alone.

Like, _really_ alone.

Seon-ho Hyung asked him if they had ever done _it_ in Hee-ju's house, but if he really wanted answers, he should have asked about what they had done in his new apartment. Although Jin-woo wouldn’t have told him, anyway; he wasn’t going to kiss and tell! Seon-ho Hyung would have countered by saying, “You do know that by saying you’re not going to kiss and tell, you’ve basically admitted that there is kissing to tell, right?” Hee-ju never spent the night in the apartment, though; “Grandma’s going to kill me,” she would reason each time Jin-woo asked her to stay with him and not return to her house. In the end, he would tag along after her every time, choosing either Se-ju's bedroom floor or the couch in her living room over his own lonely bed.

When Jin-woo finished telling her about his conversation with Se-ju, Hee-ju gasped incredulously. “I don’t know why he would think that way.”

She shook her head and gave a quiet laugh too, which, for some reason, annoyed him. “I didn’t know the thought of settling down with me is amusing to you,” he murmured.

“Oh,” Hee-ju exclaimed, eyebrows raised. “That’s not what I meant.”

Jin-woo leaned his cane against the wall next to him so he could fold his arms defensively for dramatic purposes. “What did you mean, then?”

She frowned at him as if trying to determine if he was just teasing her. When he didn’t budge, she continued, “I meant I didn’t know why he would think I would rush things. With you, I get it, because—”

“Yes?”

“You know.”

“What?”

“You’re the one who has married twice.”

Jin-woo straightened up at that. He felt like he should express some kind of rebuttal, but he ended up just staring at her, because after all, she wasn’t wrong.

(Sometime in the near future, as Hee-ju sat next to him in this very apartment while resting her head in the nook of his neck, he would confess to her that he was so in awe of her and how she always seemed to figure him out, that he almost got on one knee and proposed then and there).

“And he was right,” Hee-ju shrugged. “Maybe I do want to give school another try.”

(And that was the reason he changed his mind).

Uncrossing his arms, Jin-woo limped slowly toward her and cupped her cheeks with his hands once he was near enough. He loved that every time he walked up to her, she would look up at him and catch a breath; her pupils widened as she gazed back at him. When he looked into her eyes, he loved that he would see his reflection, peering at her, unblinking, as if he didn’t want to miss every single curve and line of her face.

Most of all, he loved that, every time he leaned in to kiss her, she would close her eyes in anticipation.

So he leaned in, watched as her eyelids fluttered close, and kissed her on the lips.

 

 

 

 

That was the first time they spent a night together at his place.

Hee-ju grabbed his hand all of a sudden, pulling him toward her. “Let’s,” she said in a hushed tone, “stay here tonight.”

Jin-woo blinked at her once, twice. “Your grandma—”

“Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I really don’t _wanna_ talk about Grandma right now.”

He snorted at that, biting his lower lip to keep himself from throwing out jokes and being the usual tease that he was. This wouldn’t be their first time sleeping together, but the mental image of him waking up next to her the next morning lent a certain weight to the moment.

When he cast his eyes back to her, he saw her there, running her tongue along her lips, and all the things that were weighing him down disappeared just like that. He wasted no time, then, tilting his head to kiss her one more time. He perched his hands around her waist, both to hold on to her and direct her toward the bedroom behind her at the same time. She had to stand up on tiptoe to kiss him back, clutching his shoulders as she took each step backward. They staggered and wobbled their way to the bedroom, so much that at one point they had to break their kiss to giggle against each other’s lips.

Somehow, they found themselves inside the bedroom. As if by instinct, his hands moved from her waist to graze against the back pockets of her jeans, clasping around her behind. With a gentle pull, he brought her closer against him. He pressed their hips together and let her know how much he wanted her, drawing a muffled gasp out of her. Jin-woo was tipping his head to deepen the kiss when the back of her knee suddenly knocked against the footboard of the bed. With a thud, she fell back onto the mattress, bringing him along with her. It took a toll on his bad knee, and he was half yelping in pain and half laughing at the awkwardness of it all. Hee-ju, who was lying under him, chortled out loud. “Sorry,” she said between howls of laughter.

He waited for the aching to subside, chuckling all the while. When his pain did finally diminish, so did their laughter, and they were both suddenly left with quietness.

Jin-woo watched as she breathed out a sigh, shakily, as if she was nervous. But there was a tinge of a smile in the corners of her mouth, and Jin-woo couldn’t help but stare, like he always did whenever he was in her presence.

Hee-ju clawed at his shoulders, lifting her head so she could give him another kiss.

His lips met hers halfway.

Later on, when he finally entered her, Hee-ju had to hold on to the headboard of his bed as he thrusted on top of her. His grunt that echoed around the room was met with her whimper, so soft and low in his ear, and if anything, it made him want to go deeper into her. His fingertips traced a path upward, from the dip of her stomach to the curve of her breasts to her shoulder blades and her arms, stopping only when they found her hands. He laced their fingers together and hung desperately onto her as he pushed even harder. Jin-woo looked down on her face, trying to memorize the way she crunched her nose and shut her eyes tightly as their bodies fell into the same, ever-increasing rhythm. And as her moans turned louder, he slipped his tongue inside her mouth, letting it coil around hers. He was so close, and there was a brief second when he wondered if she was too, when her hips bucked furiously all of a sudden. She chewed on his lower lip as she raised her hips up to meet his, and he went even faster, so fast, until he finally heard her scream, and that was what did it for him. His knuckles turned white as his grip on her hands tightened and, with one last thrust, he came inside of her.

 

 

 

 

One time, Hee-ju asked him about the magic he discovered in Granada. She had seen Emma, she still remembered the amazement she felt when it happened, so she could imagine how mind-boggling it must be for him.

Jin-woo nodded, and he told her about a statue that came to life, a soldier on his horse, the rain that didn’t soak him. He also told her about the first time he saw Emma, and that was when it came to him that the memories of the game had stopped hurting him.

Even so, that didn’t mean that he would ever go near the game again. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he was still afraid. At the same time, it would be a lie to say that to lose that magic forever, that feeling of being privy to an entirely different world, did not leave him with an empty space in his heart.

But that was before.

That one morning, for the first time in a long time, he woke up in his own bed. Blindly, his hand brushed against the sheets and reached out to the pillow next to his, expecting to find Hee-ju—who wasn’t there, apparently.

It was enough to lurch him awake. He sat upright and rubbed his eyes violently in a futile attempt to get rid of every trace of drowsiness.

“Morning.”

It was her. Jin-woo turned his head toward the sound of her voice and forced one eye open, which made Hee-ju laugh.

His own voice was hoarse when he tried to speak. “You’re awake,” he mumbled and rubbed his eyes some more. As his vision finally adjusted to the faint light, he saw that she was sitting on the edge of his side of the bed, staring outside the tall glass window. “Fine dust,” she noted, commenting on the gloomy weather.

Jin-woo followed her gaze, finding a gray and cloud-ladden sky on the other side of the window. And there was a part of him that thought, “It’s so different from Granada.” And as he grew more awake with every second that passed, he looked again at her and noticed that she was wearing one of his white T-shirts and nothing else; it was too big for her, obviously, and the hem fell somewhere above her knees. She wore her hair down like usual; a few loose strands stuck out on the side, reminding him of Se-ju.

And at the time, Jin-woo understood that he would never get that magic back. Fine dust swirling around cold and distant skyscrapers, instead of sunny Granada with its colorful houses, was what he had now. As he studied Hee-ju's profile, he knew she was not and would never be the magical, otherworldly Emma; old white T-shirt and unkempt hair—not saint-like gown and a veil that covered perfectly placed strands—were his reality now.

And he smiled to himself, because he didn’t mind that at all.

As Hee-ju gradually became aware of him staring at her, she turned away from the window to meet his eyes. With a beam on her face, she asked him what he had in his mind.

And he thought, “I’ve got all the magic right here.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit:  
> Shameless promotion. If RPF is your thing, I wrote something MotA-related [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17702357). Enjoy :)


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